Madonna, 67, is speaking candidly about a fractured relationship with her eldest daughter, Lourdes “Lola” Leon. In an Interview Magazine conversation published Monday, the pop icon discussed how her daughter, now 29, proposed they co-write a song together as a way to mend their strained bond—an offer that became pivotal to Madonna’s forthcoming album.
A Song Written to Heal
Madonna said the mother-daughter collaboration, titled “Good for the Soul,” will be featured on Confessions II, her 15th studio album, which is slated to drop July 3.
“The song I wrote with my daughter, Lola. She approached me about writing a song together as a way to heal our relationship,” Madonna said. “It was a really important moment, and it solidified the idea that now is the time to make this record.”
Madonna explained that the album was rooted deeply in personal pain rather than pop abstraction. Writing music about nothing was difficult for her, she said — every song demands a story — and this one emerged from years of unresolved family tension that she eventually transformed into dance music. Lourdes also appeared in the music video for the album track “Danceteria,” alongside Sabrina Carpenter and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Lourdes Called Her Mother a ‘Control Freak’
The rift between the two was not a recent development. In a 2021 interview with the same publication, Lourdes — a singer whom Madonna shares with ex Carlos Leon — was blunt about the dynamic at home. She said her mother was a control freak who had exerted that control throughout her entire life, and that she had felt compelled to become financially independent the moment she graduated high school. She paid her own way through college rather than accept money from one of the most commercially successful entertainers in history, a choice she framed partly as self-preservation: accepting money, she explained, would have given her mother leverage.
Madonna has never publicly disputed those characterizations. If anything, her current round of interviews suggests she understands why her daughter felt that way — and that the songwriting process offered both women a space to work through what words alone could not resolve.
A Pattern of Difficult Partings
The tension with Lourdes is not the only time Madonna’s parenting style has come under scrutiny. In the mid-2010s, she was drawn into a months-long transatlantic legal dispute with Guy Ritchie — her husband of nearly eight years before their 2008 divorce — over their son Rocco Ritchie, now 25. Rocco was 15 at the time and wanted to remain in London with his father. His preference stemmed from Madonna’s strict parenting approach. Judges ultimately urged both parents to settle the matter privately, and Rocco was permitted to stay with Ritchie in London. The two have since reconciled, and in 2025 Madonna and Ritchie appeared together publicly for the first time since their divorce, attending Rocco’s London art exhibition.
Madonna has spoken about how devastating the custody fight was. In a 2025 interview on On Purpose with Jay Shetty, she described the experience of nearly losing a child as something that made her contemplate suicide — that having someone try to take her child felt equivalent to an attempt on her own life.
Loss That Shaped the Album
The emotional weight behind Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II extends beyond her children. Madonna described a period of compounding grief that surrounded the album’s creation. Her stepmother, Joan Ciccone — with whom she had what she called a deeply traumatic relationship throughout her entire childhood — died in September 2024. Christopher Ciccone, her brother, passed away from cancer the following month. Madonna has been open in past interviews about never fully accepting her stepmother, a wound that traced back to her father’s remarriage after her birth mother died when Madonna was just five years old.
It was against that backdrop — grief, estrangement, and the unexpected olive branch from her daughter — that the album took shape. Madonna, who has six children total including four adopted, said the sequence of events felt almost scripted: death, then connection, then the making of music as a way through it all. For a performer who has spent four decades reinventing herself, the most vulnerable material on this record appears to be the most personal she has ever committed to tape.